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"Stoddard was, next to Melville and Hawthorne, the most strikingly original voice in the mid-nineteenth-century American novel, a voice . . . that ought to gain a more sympathetic and perceptive hearing in our time than in her own."--from the IntroductionThe centerpiece of this volume is "The Morgesons" (1862), one of the few outstanding feminist bildungsromanae of that century. Additional selections include arresting short stories and provocative journalistic essays/reviews, plus a number of letters and manuscript journals that have never before been published. The texts are fully edited and documented.

Excerpt: ... lately." "How is Ben?" "He has been here often. How strange it was that to him alone Veronica gave her hand when they met Indeed, she gave him both her hands." "And he?" "Took them, bowing over them, till I thought he wasn't coming up again. I do not call people eccentric any more," she said, faintly blushing. "I look for a reason in every action. Tell me fairly, have you had a contempt for me-for my want of perception? I understand you now, to the bone and marrow, I assure you." "Then you understand more than I do. But you will remember that once or twice I attempted to express my doubts to you?" "Yes, yes, with a candor which misled me. But you are talking too much." "Give me more broth, then." CHAPTER XXII. I was soon well enough to go home. Father came for me, bringing Aunt Merce. There was no alteration in her, except that she had taken to wearing a false front, which had a claret tinge when the light struck it, and a black lace cap. She walked the room in speechless distress when she saw me, and could not refrain from taking an immense pinch of snuff in my presence. "Didn't you bring any flag-root, Aunt Merce?" "Oh Lord, Cassandra, won't anything upon earth change you?" And then we both laughed, and felt comfortable together. Her knitting mania had given way to one she called transferring. She brought a little basket filled with rags, worn-out embroideries, collars, cuffs, and edges of handkerchiefs, from which she cut the needle-work, to sew again on new muslin. She looked at embroidery with an eye merely to its capacity for being transferred. Alice proved a treasure to her, by giving her heaps of fine work. She and Aunt Merce were pleased with each other, and when we were ready to come away, Alice begged her to visit her every year. I made no farewell visits-my ill health was sufficient excuse; but my schoolmates came to bid me good-bye, and brought presents of needlebooks, and pincushions, which I returned by giving away yards of...

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This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS series. The creators of this series are united by passion for literature and driven by the intention of making all public domain books available in printed format again - worldwide. At tredition we believe that a great book never goes out of style. Several mostly non-profit literature projects provide content to tredition. To support their good work, tredition donates a portion of the proceeds from each sold copy. As a reader of a TREDITION CLASSICS book, you support our mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion.

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Elizabeth Stoddard combines the narrative style of the popular nineteenth-century male-centered bildungsroman with the conventions of women's romantic fiction in this revolutionary exploration of the conflict between a woman's instinct, passion, and will, and the social taboos, family allegiances, and traditional New England restraint that inhibit her. Set in a small seaport town (1862), The Morgesons is the dramatic story of Cassandra Morgeson's fight against social and religious norms in a quest for sexual, spiritual, and economic autonomy. An indomitable heroine, Cassandra not only achieves an equal and complete love with her husband and ownership of her family's property, but also masters the skills and accomplishments expected of women. Counterpointed with the stultified lives of her aunt, mother, and sister, Cassandra's success is a striking and radical affirmation of women's power to shape their own destinies.

Embodying the convergence of the melodrama and sexual undercurrents of gothic romance and Victorian social realism, The Morgesons marked an important transition in the development of the novel and evoked comparisons during Stoddard's lifetime with such masters as Balzac, Tolstoy, Eliot, the Brontes, and Hawthorne.

...I suppose it was environment that caused me to write these novels; but the mystery of it is, that when I left my native village I did not dream that imagination would lead me there again, for the simple annals of our village and domestic ways did not interest me; neither was I in the least studious. My years were passed in an attempt to have a good time, according to the desires and fancies of youth. Of literature and the literary life, I and my tribe knew nothing; we had not discovered "sermons in stones." Where then was the panorama of my stories and novels stored, that was unrolled in my new sphere? Of course, being moderately intelligent I read everything that came in my way, but merely for amusement. It had been laid up against me as a persistent fault, which was not profitable; I should peruse moral, and pious works, or take up sewing, --that interminable thing, "white seam," which filled the leisure moments of the right-minded. To the personnel of writers I gave little heed; it was the hero they created that charmed me, like Miss Porter's gallant Pole, Sobieski, or the ardent Ernest Maltravers, of Bulwer...

We first meet Jason Auster when he climbs out of a stagecoach in a New England maritime town and, as it were, salutes destiny. A twenty-year-old house carpenter who has come adventuring, Jason hopes to "put in practice certain theories concerning the rights of men and property which had already made him a pest at home." And, indeed, theory and practice, destiny and self-determination are all following quite different paths as this antebellum story of love and power, incest and family honor, and sexual bonds and intractable conflicts between races and classes plays out against the backdrop of a nation--and a world--divided. First published in 1865, this novel tracks the fortunes of Jason and his unlikely bride, the aristocratic Sarah Parke, along with the children and wards, the lost loves and secret passions that define and forever alter an entire family and everyone who touches it. Uniquely located within the romantic, realist, and regional traditions, this oddly unsentimental tale illuminates the racial, sexual, and political conventions and conflicts of its time even as it offers an unusual and compelling perspective on the historical moment it reflects.

...I suppose it was environment that caused me to write these novels; but the mystery of it is, that when I left my native village I did not dream that imagination would lead me there again, for the simple annals of our village and domestic ways did not interest me; neither was I in the least studious. My years were passed in an attempt to have a good time, according to the desires and fancies of youth. Of literature and the literary life, I and my tribe knew nothing; we had not discovered "sermons in stones." Where then was the panorama of my stories and novels stored, that was unrolled in my new sphere? Of course, being moderately intelligent I read everything that came in my way, but merely for amusement. It had been laid up against me as a persistent fault, which was not profitable; I should peruse moral, and pious works, or take up sewing, --that interminable thing, "white seam," which filled the leisure moments of the right-minded. To the personnel of writers I gave little heed; it was the hero they created that charmed me, like Miss Porter's gallant Pole, Sobieski, or the ardent Ernest Maltravers, of Bulwer...

Elizabeth Stoddard combines the narrative style of the popular nineteenth-century male-centered bildungsroman with the conventions of women's romantic fiction in this revolutionary exploration of the conflict between a woman's instinct, passion, and will, and the social taboos, family allegiances, and traditional New England restraint that inhibit her. Set in a small seaport town (1862), The Morgesons is the dramatic story of Cassandra Morgeson's fight against social and religious norms in a quest for sexual, spiritual, and economic autonomy. An indomitable heroine, Cassandra not only achieves an equal and complete love with her husband and ownership of her family's property, but also masters the skills and accomplishments expected of women.

Counterpointed with the stultified lives of her aunt, mother, and sister, Cassandra's success is a striking and radical affirmation of women's power to shape their own destinies. Embodying the convergence of the melodrama and sexual undercurrents of gothic romance and Victorian social realism, The Morgesons marks an important transition in the development of the novel and evoked comparisons during Stoddard's lifetime with such masters as Balzac, Tolstoy, Eliot, the Brontes, and Hawthorne.